We all feel that WE’s handling of AOE3 has been particularly poor this year. People were frustrated. I sincerely hope it could get better overall next year.
In terms of what WE should improve, I think they should learn from the company WE.
For people who don’t know about WE, it is World’s Edge, the company that managed the very successful games of AOE2 and 4. Everyone was praising their quick response and good interaction with the playerbase.
Specifically:
WE fixes the relic bug in one week, while WE leaves the Maigadi visual bug and the architect fort bug for months.
WE quickly responded to players’ criticisms on variant civ names in two days and wrote a long journal article trying to explain that choice, while WE delayed a very hyped major patch for more than a month and the only message we got was “it was queued after other games”.
WE responded to the variant civ names just because of some very neutral and mild criticisms, while we had to literally riot so that WE could promise “better communication in the future” (which never happened).
WE knows how to hype its games months prior to release with announcements of announcements, while we ourselves had to dig into the game data to find some updates not shown in WE’s patch notes (and never showcased).
WE does not exclude any of its products in the events and promotions, while WE left some of its product out from the anniversary event even right after it got a major DLC.
WE tries to appease the players’ frustration over bugs very in-time, while WE rarely gives any clear message on its game.
(The best part: this is under AOE3’s patch note)
I feel everyone’s frustration here. WE has been doing a very poor job this year. Let’s hope WE could really learn from WE on how to manage games and maintain a positive community,
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Someone needs to get fired at management…
Also, can i say: how in the hell is worlds edge logo so ugly. Really looks trustworthy and sparks of quality assurance when it looks like done by an unpaid intern in 2 minutes (1 and half to open the software).
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Fired? No. Promoted.
Everything has been carefully planned and has been moving in the direction they want.
Showing aoe4 dlc news on aoe2 and aoe3 news-board in-game is a shady tactic at best (as showing aoe4 games in the Worlds Edge intro cinematic only present in Aoe3, not even in Aoe4, which is their in house product). If it was going all according to the plan, they wouldn’t have to resort to use such things.
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That’s because the AOE series is a big family. There is no barrier between games and their players.
Well we once thought that it means every game gets love and support. But what it actually means is “all go and play AOE4 otherwise you’re not part of the family”.
(However, if you stick to AOE2 we can’t do much beyond persuading. But if you stick to AOE3 then we’ll use brute force)
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AoE1 stares intensely through the window from outside, before going back to sleep in the dumpster.
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I’m confused what’s the difference of the WE mentioned?
Do Aoe3De changed devs?
In fact, WE invested quite a bit of resources not only for 1DE but also had 2nd a go-around with RoR. And yet still didn’t manage to revive it.
The all-time peak was less than 2800 players on Steam.
This isn’t remotely comparable to 3DE.
And I say this with respect to the game that started it all.
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Well RoR keeps getting “ported” original campaigns for free (with zero profitability) maybe because it’s an AOE2 DLC.
And they were desperately trying to attract the espooorts community in Vietnam…that’s a different story.
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This is where they should totally do the thing they did with Korea in AoE2 originally - bring that civ in purely for the shallow (but smart) reason of drawing a region in (Vietnamese would at least be one more AD civ to the roster). I mean this is partly my reasoning for wanting Brazil in the game (and I’m not a fan of the post-rev Fed State civs!).
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Nah, as Sandy said, the devs working on aoe2 tried to reply with ‘well the game you say is doing well in Korea doesn’t have koreans in it (starcraft1?), yet it got popular’, but invain, microsoft ‘management’ wanted them to put korea. Then, he said they did the civ in less than 2 weeks, including design and everything else before the game release.
Just because a civ is there, doesn’t mean it will get popular or bought in that country, especially if aoe3 gets the treatment of ‘don’t show anything of the game as it could make aoe4 look bad’.
Example (from reddit):
The Sultans Ascend:
Vs
The sultans with lancer ascend?
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Oh AoE3 is the better looking game, is it?
It won’t be the better looking one if no one is looking, will it? Wink wink.
Cue the AoE4 dlc news on the AoE3 newsboard.
Barf!
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I got my hopes up for just a brief instant last night when I booted up Aoe3 & saw a new news post pop up. Alas!
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The biggest wish of the World’s Edge for Age of Empires 3 is probably to let Age of Empires 3 die quietly. Here are some simple facts:
- In the 2022 Age of Empires anniversary event, there was almost no mention of Age of Empires 3, which had just undergone the largest update change in history, and no images were displayed.
- The Red Bull game includes Age of Empires 1, 2, and 4. Guess who is excluded?
- In order to promote the update of Age of Empires 4, the updates of Age of Empires 3 was withdrawn and postponed for at least one month (the “July Patch” that occurred in August this year)
- Twitter was forced to perfunctorily update two Age of Empires 3 content, but did not include any images of the new units that had just been updated (it can be seen that the people in WE do not understand what happened in Age of Empires 3 at all)
- Transferring and firing core employees of Age of Empires 3, turning this originally most active Age of Empires game into a project where even bug fixes are problematic.
- No communication with the community
- Under the information of Age of Empires 3, a promotion for the DLC of Age of Empires 4 was posted.
- Various “activities” without sincerity
- What’s particularly damning is that the developers of Age of Empires 3 (Tantalus and the Forgotten Empire) put a lot of love and effort into this game. Not only did WE pay no attention to these, there was no publicity, and they almost destroyed the project through their own personnel deployment.
- And more…
11.(Supplementary) What just disgusted me today is that they actually included an advertisement for the Age of Empires 4 DLC in the Age of Empires 3 game. . .So now this game is just an advertising spot to promote Age of Empires 4 in their eyes?
Stupid the World’s Edge!
I highly doubt there are any Age of Empires 3 players in this organization called “World’s Edge”. No, it should be said that I was doubtful before, but now I am convinced, there is none. There may be veteran players of Age of Empires 2 and fans of Age of Empires 4, but no one really cares about Age of Empires 3. Because it’s not their game, that’s why they can ignore or even destroy it so unscrupulously.
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One of the devs even said they aren’t allowed to say much, right?
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This is a good topic. Many of the recent developments (or lack thereof) for Aoe3DE really feels like MS doesn’t want the eyes to move away from the new Aoe4. But i doubt it’s devs fault, devs generally do a good job under limited resources. Most likely it is some suits up top on MS putting all the money on Aoe4 and pennies for aoe3.
Aoe3 has been steadily growing, and even I am impressed sometimes how many new players play it fairly regularly, casually, co-op and ranked. 60k follow the game on twitch. Quite an impressive growth from measly 25k a year ago.
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Via Inferno on the AoE Dischord:
"No news I can disclose right now due to updated NDAs for me, but you know I’ll pop in as soon as that changes!
Also have to be very cautious about what kind of communications I put out across all platforms now and for the foreseeable future and that’s about all I can say for now."
The last part always seems a little ominous - maybe they feel that they have to be careful to put out Social Media imagery that might tenously be taken as a DLC/Update teaser when it’s not (Berry bushes!).
edit: quote was taken from last month.
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The entire message is a bit ominous to be honest, especially considering the context, as GwentMaster has already summarized.
I feels quite bad for the devs, how their work is constantly being ignored by World’s Edge.
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I think this is due to the recent DLCs for AOE 2 and AOE 4, but mostly due to AOM RETOLD DEVELOPMENT.
The least they could do is not vomit advertisment from AOE 4 into my AOE 3 game.
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